The American Dream
555 Harbor Boulevard, Belmont, California. This is the address
of one of the most unconventional print shops in the US: Moquin
Press. The company's business model is as unusual as the career
path of its founder - Greg Moquin - or is it really just
"typical American"? Imagine, if you can: a flood of
orders without any customers, two Speedmaster XL 105s and sunny
California.
Greg Moquin is someone who doesn't give up, someone who fights. He is someone who did not set out to start his own print shop, but then climbed the ladder from "garage printer" to owner of a business with 90 employees just outside beautiful San Francisco. A true "Made in the USA" success story - and this despite a career start which was anything but promising. At his first job in an acquaintance's processing company, Greg was literally first given the "dirty work to do: mopping the floors, cleaning and taking out the garbage, - all day, every day." But Greg was ambitious. Little by little, he acquired the knowledge of a machine operator and made his way to the next rung of his career ladder: he became an "unskilled worker".
With hindsight, one of the driving factors in his career was, quite honestly, a lack of money, the businessman readily admits, "Life in the San Francisco area is very expensive. And the position as an unskilled worker was not well-paid." Thus the young Moquin soon began looking around for another job. Eventually he found a position at a print shop which offered him a higher hourly wage. For the first time, Greg was actually trained on running equipment - the company's printing machines - and he discovered that he really enjoyed the work.
Printing in the garage
He was still not making enough money to pay the bills including the mortgage on his house. To make a little extra money, he decided to buy a used printing press with the goal of restoring it and selling it and pocketing the profit. But life does not always work according to plan: A realtor friend asked him to print some business cards and before Greg knew it, the next customer was waiting on his doorstep so he decided to set up his own business in the garage behind his house with two used printing presses, a platen press and a paper cutter. The neighbors, however, were anything but pleased about Greg's new enterprise. They wanted to enjoy their peace and quiet in the evening hours and on weekends instead of having to spend their free time listening to the sounds of a press humming next door. When the local authorities began to hound him about the noise, the garage printer eventually moved to a new building. "It was a little, 400-square-foot warehouse," he recalls. "It cost one US-Dollar per square foot." Naturally, this move involved more expenses, so Greg took on even more orders and proved to be very proficient.
Everything was going smoothly - or so it seemed - until his day job employer discovered that Greg was moonlighting on the side, running his own printing business, which they viewed as a conflict of interest. Needless to say, Greg was given his walking papers. "I became really desperate and started knocking on the doors of other small printers with duplicators. I could print work they couldn't - solids, screens, and halftones on coated paper. I started getting work from those guys," Greg recalls.
At this point in his career, Greg realized he needed to make 100 US-Dollars (71 Euro) in revenues a week for his livelihood, an ambitious goal - but he managed it and continued to grow. "From the start, I handled orders very quickly. If an order came in on Monday, I delivered it to the customer on Tuesday," remembers Greg. And according to him, short delivery times are still the trademark of Moquin Press today, "We are incredibly service-oriented. That's one of the reasons why the business is doing so well."
You can download the complete article on the top right-hand side.
Greg Moquin is someone who doesn't give up, someone who fights. He is someone who did not set out to start his own print shop, but then climbed the ladder from "garage printer" to owner of a business with 90 employees just outside beautiful San Francisco. A true "Made in the USA" success story - and this despite a career start which was anything but promising. At his first job in an acquaintance's processing company, Greg was literally first given the "dirty work to do: mopping the floors, cleaning and taking out the garbage, - all day, every day." But Greg was ambitious. Little by little, he acquired the knowledge of a machine operator and made his way to the next rung of his career ladder: he became an "unskilled worker".
With hindsight, one of the driving factors in his career was, quite honestly, a lack of money, the businessman readily admits, "Life in the San Francisco area is very expensive. And the position as an unskilled worker was not well-paid." Thus the young Moquin soon began looking around for another job. Eventually he found a position at a print shop which offered him a higher hourly wage. For the first time, Greg was actually trained on running equipment - the company's printing machines - and he discovered that he really enjoyed the work.
Printing in the garage
He was still not making enough money to pay the bills including the mortgage on his house. To make a little extra money, he decided to buy a used printing press with the goal of restoring it and selling it and pocketing the profit. But life does not always work according to plan: A realtor friend asked him to print some business cards and before Greg knew it, the next customer was waiting on his doorstep so he decided to set up his own business in the garage behind his house with two used printing presses, a platen press and a paper cutter. The neighbors, however, were anything but pleased about Greg's new enterprise. They wanted to enjoy their peace and quiet in the evening hours and on weekends instead of having to spend their free time listening to the sounds of a press humming next door. When the local authorities began to hound him about the noise, the garage printer eventually moved to a new building. "It was a little, 400-square-foot warehouse," he recalls. "It cost one US-Dollar per square foot." Naturally, this move involved more expenses, so Greg took on even more orders and proved to be very proficient.
Everything was going smoothly - or so it seemed - until his day job employer discovered that Greg was moonlighting on the side, running his own printing business, which they viewed as a conflict of interest. Needless to say, Greg was given his walking papers. "I became really desperate and started knocking on the doors of other small printers with duplicators. I could print work they couldn't - solids, screens, and halftones on coated paper. I started getting work from those guys," Greg recalls.
At this point in his career, Greg realized he needed to make 100 US-Dollars (71 Euro) in revenues a week for his livelihood, an ambitious goal - but he managed it and continued to grow. "From the start, I handled orders very quickly. If an order came in on Monday, I delivered it to the customer on Tuesday," remembers Greg. And according to him, short delivery times are still the trademark of Moquin Press today, "We are incredibly service-oriented. That's one of the reasons why the business is doing so well."
You can download the complete article on the top right-hand side.
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